


The Old Ghost of Peaceful Repose

by Parhelion



Category: The Instrumentality of Mankind - Cordwainer Smith
Genre: Bad Poetry, Gen, Ghosts, Original Character(s), Robots, Science Fiction, Underperson, Worldbuilding, good poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parhelion/pseuds/Parhelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...after many adventures, they came at last to Nerguy, where they were fated to meet a dog-youth, sundry demons, and a ghost. Even for those who could survive space-three, there was real peril to be found here for the unknowing and the unwitting. If not for the dog-youth's warning...</p><p>From <em>Mad Harry's Songs: A Study in the Poetry of Transcendental Adventure</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old Ghost of Peaceful Repose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



I

There is an unlicensed tale that starts in space-three and stops just before a robot, a rat, and a Copt share what they learned in the farthest Up-and-Out. No one who travels the starlanes between Instrumentality worlds is allowed to know the whole of it or the end of it. But this story would not delve into such forbidden details if it could, for it is not that kind of tale.

Nor is this the story of Lord Crudelta and his second expedition, the grand and gruesome voyage of an exploratory fleet intended by his fellow Lords and Ladies of the Instrumentality to go past the ends of anywhere and conquer the nowhere. That fleet all went to space-three with him and only seven returned. Although Crudelta lived on through many glorious troubles at that time and afterwards, some of which were even his, this tale is not of them.

Rather, here is a minor story about a second trio who came home after long tribulations at Crudelta's harsh and innocent instigation, a trio who went to space-three and found Nothing-At-All. Even though Nothing on Old Earth is also illegal to discuss, artists can and have told lawful tales of these three's journey back from Beyond to Manhome, recounting their adventures along the way. This will be a tiny tale of that kind. And, as is appropriate to celebrate a season of Nothing, it will also be a ghost story.

II

Once he'd contemplated all of what happened, mad and handsome Harry would later write in the tenth canto of his best-known epic, _The Time of Springing and Falling_ :

_I ran that route like a razored rooster_  
 _and stole a song that the dog-youth sang_  
 _to tell a tale of a nothing cloister_  
 _that brought our brother back to old An-Fang._

"Though, to be honest," Harry would comment, "it's nothing at all like my best work. But much more going on at that place and I wouldn't have been able to find even a mediocre stanza with both hands and a pinlighter's set."

III

Like Harry's poetry, this story can be written because nothing much was happening when Harry and Hachi first came to Nerguy.

The dull and inauspicious planetary year in Nerguy during which they visited fell late in the first century of the Rediscovery of Man. Old thoughts, old fashions and old styles of speaking were accepted once again, their mangled remains salvaged for humanity by too-brilliant scholars, homunculi, and machines from odd and unsafe places beneath Manhome and far along the faintest of starlanes. Half-forgotten, shell-ship settled Nerguy, distant even among the outermost worlds administered by the Instrumentality of Man, had lately seen many travelers arriving to take part in ancient customs that had once been felt to be a shame and a bore.

Many came for the Cold Playa salt dances, and many more for the feast of the forest ornithopter's ardor. Once the planetary year turned and the festival celebrations were done, a few adventurers also spike-climbed the flagged tracks of the High or rode half-feral robots across the Wide to harry the shambling herds. No matter why they came, almost everyone arrived via the planoships that whispered out toward the interstellar fringes from the inner worlds ringing Old Earth.

Harry and Hachi came off-schedule and from another direction entirely, disembarking during a season even designated guides for visitors claimed was tedious. In truth, for one place, this was a dangerous lie. But only an underperson or robot could be blunt enough to say so with words instead of hinting politely or nudging discreetly and telepathically.

After all, danger was supposed to be a wonder and a joy after the just-past, bland centuries of four-hundred year, prearranged lives followed by equally scheduled and sanitary deaths. However, now that humanity knew danger once more, it was losing its charm for anyone not half-cracked, so non-hominids were assigned to Nerguy's planetary terminal to tend these slightly perverse visitors. True humans with any sense stayed well away.

One or two underpeople were always kept in place for the most difficult cases, those who loved the wild new freedoms of the Rediscovery enough to disrupt the nicer new pleasures and pleasing new profits of others including Nerguy's planetary council. Told to hold their tongues, these special touts guided such sorts toward exactly what they seemed to prefer: true peril. Either way matters went then, a problem would be resolved, or so the administrators would have said if they had bothered to consider the situation after first taking steps. As was usually the case in those years, hominids had handed down their most chaotic and dirty chores to homunculi, and along with it, the burdens of their consciences.

Harry and Hachi knew none of this and would not have cared if they had known. They stepped into the carved and tangled towers of Nerguy's sole spaceport after journeying through places much more distant and alien than the High or the Wide, long after they had first swum away from something stranger still. From Expedition Chronicler and Stop-Captain, the two of them had shifted to being survivors of space-three, and this had made them into men with a mission. Neither of them was pleased by their recently chosen pilgrimage: no surprise. What almost all of the sparse handfuls who have been through space-three desperately want is nothing more than to go home, live quietly, and never consider space-three again.

For his part, mad, formerly bad, and soon to be famous Harry King wanted poetry and mayhem, but he still didn't want Nerguy. When he disembarked from the ancient shuttle, he looked at the guides and touts milling about him and asked, "Now, why are these creatures here to bother me?"

Former Stop-Captain Shigo Hachirou would have happily settled for the rice beer of his reconstructed culture and a friendly bath-attendant with no objections to a kiss. Both seemed like possibilities somewhere within this chaos, but he had Harry instead. Resigned, he eyed the crowd with an experienced gaze, not in the least put off by their being mostly underpeople and robots. Hachi was very crude.

He said to Harry, "For a forgetty, you do have a lot of preferences. A pity they didn't wall away some of them alongside your memories of whatever you did to be shipped out with Crudelta. Those gathered here are doing their jobs. This swarm and cluttering is supposed to be exciting."

"I'm a learned and licensed tale-teller who doesn't merit minor nuisances; you bet I have preferences. And this isn't exciting, it's tacky." Harry scowled so fiercely at a reconstructed Sherpa trying to interest him in the Ice Caves of Kokachin that the robot quailed. That subtle piece of social interaction hinted the creature must have been built on the basis of a well-preserved mouse brain.

Hachi shrugged. "So, then. Why don't we leave this big pile of vertical ornamentation? I want a drink. Maybe lots of drinks, and we already cleared the customs officials. Do you know if you're ready to go find some liquor?"

"I don't know a thing, and I guess we'll have to stay here long enough for me to not know it better." Harry glowered threateningly at another tout trying to interest him in abyss skating.

"If we must. Dice?"

"Sure."

They both pulled out the cerebrally-calibrated fortune-telling cubes of their respective and supposed ancestors, squatted down, and rolled the bones across the red and saffron patterns worked into the parquet of the terminal floor.

"Wind over water," Hachi said, once the cubes had stopped skittering and settled. "Meaning: pigs and fish. Keep going. Don't disdain underlings. Ford the lake and win."

"Snake's eyes," Harry retorted. "Other meaning: the dog throw. Treachery, danger. Could be an advantage somewhere in all these disadvantages."

As one, they scooped up dice, stood, and turned to gaze through the crowd of the artificial hucksters surrounding them. The group had slightly backed away out of respect for the visitors' obvious and eccentric fierceness, partially clearing a corridor through the crowd in one direction.

At the end of this, by the main entrance of the terminal, a solitary figure propped himself against one carved and gilded lintel of the outer doors. He was evidently intended to represent a grubby-yet-winsome-streetwise-youth-of-cunning-but-possibly-steadfast-character. What he actually was, was an underperson. Given the thick and attractively folded ears, the alert cock of his head, and a certain aware and attentive air, he was likely derived from canine stock.

Harry gestured toward the homunculus with his iron hiking staff. "That him, over there?" It was hard to tell if he wanted conformation or to share his annoyance.

"At least he's fetching." Hachi shook out the sleeves of his third-best kimono before straightening the knot of his neck-tie. He was truly very crude.

Upon their approaching him, the dog-youth proved to be not only fetching -- primarily for a hostel -- but also determinedly discouraging. "Would my potential patrons like to visit the House of Peaceful and Enlightening Repose? It lies besides the waters of Great Winter Sky Lake, those famously known for both their clarity and chill. Cold bathing upon first awakening is said to be profoundly healthy." This commendable recommendation seemed to fill him with gloom.

"Is alcohol available?" Hachi asked him.

"Salted, fermented milk. Milk is a nourishing maternal secretion methodically squeezed from the glands of an Old Earth-derived mammalian animal. Specifically, one named a mare." 

"How's the view at this place?" Harry inquired in his turn.

"Mostly vertical, regularly misty, frequently precipitating, usually snowing. Often, visitors find it hard to breathe."

Harry snorted. "Sounds poetical as all get-out. In a day or two, I bet I'll be wanting to crush skulls with my bare hands. And then I'll write an elegy about it."

"No crushing in front of possible retainers." Hachi emphasized his reproof to Harry with a swift jab of the pole of the _kumade_ he had taken to carrying during their travels, dodging a retaliatory, lightning-fast swipe of Harry's staff with the ease of long practice. "No poetry, either. Not until he has built up some sort of immunity." Then he turned back to the dog-youth. "Very nice," he said. "As for you, you're rented. Do you have a name you'd prefer us to use?"

This unusually considerate query seemed to depress the dog-youth even more. "Your new and temporary servant's chosen and registered name is Young D'Zolpa."

He paused for a long moment, and then something seemed to break open inside him. When he spoke again, his voice betrayed his origins, pitching his words somewhere between a mournful song and moaning. "To be honest? The House of Peaceful and Enlightening Repose is dangerous, quite dangerous. It's seasonally haunted by demons. According to my research, those are Old Earth-derived, supposedly-mythical creatures dedicated to tormenting humanoids for behavioral flaws. Via flesh-eating, in this instance."

"I bet we'll love 'em," Harry told him, smiling at last.

IV

For the first part of their journey, as they crossed the fringes of the Wide, their vehicle ran along tracks.

"No flying?" Harry asked, craning his neck to follow the progress of a herd of feral robots paralleling their route. He had a good view from the seat next to D'Zolpa, and the bright colors of all the sigils lacquered onto the herd's platings stood out vividly against the low ranges of brush covered, red and brown hills, making the mechanisms easy to spot.

"Not with that kind of topography nearby," Hachi said from behind him, pointing past Harry's right ear toward the columned walls of rock ahead of them. The stepped cliffs were so high that they ascended out of view into the churning cloud-cover. "This region's thermals must be big ones."

"They are," D'Zolpa confirmed. "Also, unpredictable. If my temporary patrons will now turn their attention to the left, they may view a herd of shambles, creatures originally purpose-bred from the Old-Earth species of reindeer and yaks. Their decendents are somewhat enlarged."

His patrons duly viewed. What had looked like a distant, smudgy-brown range of hills proved to be, as they drove past a wind gap in the closer, red-rock range, the backs of a herd of grazing animals. 

"Yeah, kind of big," Harry noted. "Surprised they're upright. You'd think their legs would snap and they'd just lie there suffocating in the dirt."

"Fibers and minerals concentrated from the plant materials and playa soil deposits that shambles favor are incorporated into the skeletal and muscular systems, as well as used for a secondary source of metabolic nutrients." D'Zolpa said. He seemed to enjoy lecturing on this topic, and was positively cheerful as he added, "Their movement is slow but inevitable."

"Huh. It must be hard on any local architecture. Is that why the herds of robots?"

"My temporary patron is astute," D'Zolpa told him, somehow managing to express surprise without actually allowing it into his tone or expression. "The robot packs' movements steer the shambles' peregrinations in such a way as to maximize nutrients and minimize damage. As well, robots salvage the hides of dead shambles for use in planoship construction and their antlers for carving. The antlers are quite useful in fabricating psychic-tech items such as pin-sets, as well."

"Harry may meet some standards for astute," said Hachi, "but not the standards that would get me my drinks. Or anything in the way of good food." He smacked his lips thoughtfully. "Now that we're discussing nutrition, I'm hungry. What does shamble flank-steak taste like?"

"Poison," Harry and D'Zolpa chorused, and then glanced at each other in surprise. As the humanoid of the pair, Harry was the one to continue with, "Have to be, with any diet giving them that kind of support and fuel." He turned his attention back to D'Zolpa. "I'd imagine all the shambles and robots are why we're on tracks."

"Veering from their courses can have singularly unfortunate results, yes. The traffic monitors shift these rails for safety's sake as needed." As he spoke, there was a shimmer ahead of them and a metallic singing beneath. D'Zolpa compensated with the ease of long practice. "We can stop at the Mobile Traveler's Rest to be found past the second ridgeline ahead if my temporary patrons so desire."

They did. Or, at least, Hachi did and Harry was preoccupied enough with considering the shambles not to protest.

When they reemerged two planetary hours later, it was in something of a hurry. D'Zolpa got them back into the transport, onto the tracks and moving as quickly as he could without stinting the time to make sure Harry and Hachi were belted back into their seats and had their pole-arms properly micro-formed. Still, he didn't relax until the domed structures of the rest stop were three ridgelines behind them.

The silence held, broken only by the sweet, silver whine of the rails, the hum of the engine, and Harry's half-baked, muttered attempts to describe the shambles in ways that satisfied him. It wasn't until high cliffs consumed the whole view ahead of them, blocking out all sight of the sky across half the horizon, that Hachi interrupted the now three-quarters-baked rhymes from the back seat with a contented belch. He followed that with, "What was the name of that one dish again, the one with the grainy dark meat steamed in pastry?"

Harry rolled his eyes so dramatically it resembled a dance-actor's gesture. "Ordered three servings before you offered to swap our cook sex for the recipe, and you still can't remember? Black pudding pie, I seem to recall."

Unperturbed, Hachi said, "I hope they make it at our destination. I'd love some more."

"It is available," D'Zolpa told him, "although our usual senior chef specializes in a cuisine emphasizing yogurt and cheese, rather than sheep's' blood."

After a moment's considering silence, Harry asked, "Is there an unusual senior chef?"

D'Zolpa's ears drooped. "During this season, there is. Demons have proved to favor their own, indigenous cuisine."

"I didn't know that. Did you know that, Hachi?"

"No." Hachi's tone was thoughtful. "I didn't. What do you think demon cuisine emphasizes?"

"Well, now. Given the flesh-eating part of our earlier briefing, not the native vegetation. The best cuts of humanoids, I'd bet."

His tone returned entirely to gloom, D'Zolpa said, "My temporary patron is again correct."

Once more, near silence fell in the vehicle, this time with a considering air to it. Before it broke, they were traveling along switchbacks on a road that crossed the slopes of fallen scree at the base of the cliffs, one built atop shattered and eroded rocks restrained only by metal webbing. They had climbed a good and perilous distance before Hachi asked, "So. Exactly how often do people get devoured at this inn of yours?"

"Not my inn, respected temporary patron. Rather, the House of Peaceful and Enlightening Repose is supported throughout the year by the Central Visitor's Authority of Nerguy's High Council of Advisors."

"Who do they advise?" Harry said, abruptly looking up from interlacing his fingers. "These fellows in charge."

"The Advisors advise..." D'Zolpa began, and then trailed off. His expression was puzzled. After a pause, he said, "They lead, rather than advise, our planetary government, but have always had that title. No one, I think? Not the Instrumentality, at least."

"The Instrumentality would advise them," Hachi said, and, "Speaking of which, are we discussing two or three? Perhaps two or three visitors butchered a year?"

"If those people were coming in from Old Earth, even that small a number of deaths should have caused trouble by now," Harry said, his tone distinctly snide.

Hachi crossed his arms. "In former days, but we've embraced the Rediscovery, Harry. If Nerguy's High Council reworked their death recordings, they might not have had much in the way of trouble. We're far enough out into the paddies that an Instrumentality Chief could acceptably take a bribe to overlook a disappearance here, a not-so-accidental death there. Although that sort of incautious behavior will earn a Chief trouble in the end, when the Lords and Ladies have ways of making their displeasure known."

"You should know," Harry said softly to the roof of the car, and more loudly added, "All righty, then. Treachery. Just what I expected."

"You always expect treachery."

"Sure do. How many times have we been ambushed on this journey already? First off, there was that Fortress at Four Summits --"

Ignoring the fact Harry was still talking, Hachi said, "I do wish you wouldn't always assume. We've met some lovely people along the way. They had such good wine on--"

"--Gutburg, that was a pesthole, loved the homicidal watch-computer who'd only speak in order to give reports to really dead people, and the Tower of Drunken Bees where you --"

"-- think about all the people we've helped, the elders, and children, and pretty maidens, and handsome youths we've rescued. They haven't tried to kill us. At least, not very directly --"

"-- on Evan's Happy Meadows with those spotty, jingly cows galloping around, setting everything on fire with their _tails_ \--"

"-- and at this rate, given how you suspect _everyone_ , I'm never, ever going to have a pleasant rest or a friendly massage again. It's off-putting, Harry, and --"

"-- of course I expect treachery along our way. It's like expecting planets to have weather. Likely we'll have to kill some folks on Nerguy, too."

"You always want to kill some folks. It makes it so hard to arrange long-term relationships. You killed my last pilot."

"She tried to kill us first. They always want to kill us first. And you kill things, too, just nowhere near as well as I do."

"That's not true of everyone we meet. We've only just met D'Zolpa, a thousand pardons, Young D'Zolpa, and he hasn't tried to kill us even once. Yet." Hachi flashed an apologetic smile at D'Zolpa, who was looking rather tense as he stared fixedly at the vehicle's controls and then through his viewscreen, back and forth. "Also, dealing with problems is hard work, and I haven't had a drink yet, or a hot bath, or anything very nice except for lunch. And you shouldn't be rude to Young D'Zolpa by mentioning killing while he's driving. It's worse than poetry."

Harry started to retort and then grimaced instead. Turning to gaze back out his window, he stared point-blank at rock.

During the bickering, they had reached the cliff face. Instead of parking, their vehicle had sunk down upon its suspension, recessed its wheels, and extruded a number of prehensile, multi-jointed limbs. Using these, it had begun pulling itself up the metal webbing holding back the scree slopes in something of the fashion of a spider climbing its web. The interlaced and occasionally anchored cables of its pathway continued right off the scree and up the raw rock of the cliff face, past the edge of what was visible above them. Their vehicle moved more quickly clambering than it had while rolling. The hilly plains along the fringes of the Wide were already receding into indistinctness beneath them.

The High was well provided with cliffs, some sheer and mountainous and some columned and shaped as if the supports of a thousand spaceports like Nerguy's one had been fused together. Many of the cliffs ended at large step-backs covered by silver-green needled forests, or terraced fields of low shrubs speckled with red, or shattered stretches of blue-tinted rocks, only to be over-topped by yet another set of cliffs. There was something seemingly structured about the landscape, as if these columned mountains had been built by the alien Daimoni to their indestructible standards and then abandoned for millions of years until a patina of nature settled over them. But that was a humanoid's interpretation of how this world's native processes altered unfamiliar stone. Off to one side, Harry saw green light glinting from a glacier pouring out of a hanging valley and down walls of icy rock into the unseen depths of a fold in the great pillars, carving as it went. 

Harry frowned. He opened his mouth, stopped to rub his forehead as if it suddenly pained him, and then spoke with the air of one now resuming an argument for the sake of debate. "Young D'Zolpa doesn't have to drive. You could drive."

"Pilot, not drive. And, no, I couldn't. I won't pilot giant spiders." Hachi shuddered. "Not even mechanical ones. Not even in fun. You know why. Given that time back in the Douglas-Ouyang system when we were sneaking through what was supposed to be a pass on that mountain trail and then--"

"Well, all right," Harry hastily interrupted. "You may have a point there."

"Oh?" Hachi said, obviously nonplussed by the yielding. "So, good."

They both turned their attention back to the view.

V

Great Winter Sky Lake deserved its name, cupped as it was like a huge pool of liquid mercury in the palms of the snowcapped mountains around it, the waters still beneath the grey and glowing clouds surging by overhead. The House of Peaceful and Enlightening Repose should have been less impressive than its setting. It was little more than an extended, three-storied structure with curve-peaked, red-tiled roofs, numerous and plain windows, and identically pretty, whitewashed wings that branched off in various directions as if someone had forgotten whatever plans they had initially made to stop building. However, this overall impression, of a structure ready-made for mediocre portrayal on a hard-copy, planetary souvenir calendar, was ruined by two disruptive details. The first was the tapered walls of a central hall that shone with faintly pearlescent tones in the shifting light reflected from snowfields and lake.

"Is that Daimoni work?" Hachi asked. He'd exited their vehicle, stretched luxuriously, retrieved and expanded his _kumade_ , and was now using it to point at the hall.

"Yes, my esteemed and temporary patron. It's one of only two structures of their design and construction left on Nerguy, the other being the Bell-Tower of Lesser Shandoi. Although the initial intent of this commission is unknown, lost during the interregnum following the Second Plague War. Only the hall itself remains." D'Zolpa sounded rather preoccupied as he spoke, perhaps because of the House's second disruptive detail.

The canine-like creature squatting on its haunches in the middle of the gravel path winding toward the House's front entrance was about the size of one of the cattle of Evan's Happy Meadows, if seemingly less prone to setting things on fire with its tail. Instead it had eyes of flame, ones as large as their vehicle's recent rail-wheels and spinning just as fast. It also had some considerable amount of muscle, long claws presently digging rude holes into the patterns raked along the gravel pathway, yellowed fangs protruding from a huge muzzle that slavered red drool, and a strong odor of doggy sulfur.

"Excuse me, please," D'Zolpa said. Reaching out to grasp a spade that had been left dug into a heap of gravel by the path, he leaped forward with a sound that was half shout and half yelp. He bounded down the path, whirling the spade around in intricate and confusing circles, and then smacked its head hard against the nose of the dog-creature blocking their way.

The creature's own yelp was about three octaves deeper than D'Zolpa's war cry. It sprang to its feet and fled behind one of the numerous wings, hurried along by a few harrying blows to its flanks.

"Good one," Hachi said.

Harry nodded grudging acknowledgment. "Might have been a little faster on that reverse spin, but pretty impressive overall, I'd agree."

D'Zolpa trotted back to them, still holding the spade. He was as obviously exasperated as respectfulness would allow him to be when he said, "I only got away with that because I'm of canine stock myself. Would my temporary patrons _please_ now reconsider the merits of the Ice Caves of Kokachin as a travel destination?"

Hachi settled for looking apologetic. It was Harry who shook his head and said, "Afraid not. And I have to say, if this is the afternoon overture, I'd sure hate to miss the evening show."

"My temporary patrons are both going to die," D'Zolpa said mournfully. Then, "My temporary patrons and I are all going to die," he corrected himself, brightening slightly. Sticking two fingers of his free hand into his mouth, he whistled for a turtle robot to come and unload the luggage.

There was another of the dog-creatures in the entrance lobby, this one about half again as large as its predecessor, asleep and snoring thunderously upon the loom-woven, mountain-patterned rug that covered most of the flagstone floor. Its nap frustrated immediate assessment of the size of its eyes. Since D'Zolpa ignored it except for a detour on his way across the hall to a large, wooden desk, Harry and Hachi did likewise.

The desktop was unadorned. Its only contents were the pieces of a slobber-coated and slightly mangled arm that a solitary, human-formed robot was attempting to reaffix to itself. Noticing the visitors, this attendant stopped, tried to join palms and bow -- which did not work out well -- and asked, "How may I be of service?"

Harry told him, "We're staying here. Best set of rooms available, nice meal after sundown in whatever passes for a food dispensary, a pause for demons to try and kill us -- " At these words, the robot gave D'Zolpa a deeply reproachful look. "-- and early first meals served to us in the morning. Maybe a little wander along the lake shore afterward with a packed, midday snack to bring along."

"I'd like fermented or distilled drinks with dinner," Hachi said, his words earnest. "Really, quite a lot of drinks with alcohol in them."

"And this duly licensed tout, Young D'Zolpa, will be staying with us in our rooms. He's keeping your spade, too."

The robot rolled its head brightly. "As the honored off world guests desire, so shall it be." A discrete grating noise, and it inquired, "Are there any particular funerary customs, perhaps, merely as a precaution?"

After a moment, Harry lowered his raised eyebrows. He turned to study what was sleeping on the carpet in the middle of the hall, and the way its snores were making some nearby tapestries waft back and forth gently on their arrases. Then he turned back and recited,

_When I die, please put me into my high-standing hat,_  
 _slide the twenty donors' gold piece onto my waist-chain,_  
 _so the gangs will all know that I died standing flat._  
 _I want six crazed shooters to be my torch-bearers,_  
 _and three underwomen to sing me a song,_  
 _stand a jostling band atop my harnessed wagon,_  
 _and raise me a holler as I stroll along._

The robot seemed confused; D'Zolpa seemed both confused and intrigued. The dog-creature snored louder.

Hachi sighed before saying, "Show us to our chambers, please."

VI

"Bad dog!" D'Zolpa said sternly. "Down! No eating food from the table! Get down!"

Frequent punctuation of his words with the spade seemed to be doing more good than his moral instruction. With a mournful howl pitched deep enough to shake bones, the third, and largest yet, dog bolted out into the dark between the huge, brass-strapped doors that had been opened wide to display a lakeside terrace. There was a loud series of crunches as it bounded down the terrace's stone stairs onto another of the House's gravel paths and then crossed the shingle of the lake shore. Ruddy light from its whirling eyes of flame could be seen receding off into the distance, across what should be the waters of the lake, but there were no faint sounds of splashing or swimming.

Squaring his shoulder and lowering the spade, D'Zolpa turned back to check the hall. If not for the huge fires blazing in the five hearths spaced evenly along the wall behind them, the open doors would have made the lengthy hall entirely too chilly. As it was, any dining visitors would be warm enough to eat but caught between chill before and heat behind for the sake of a striking view. Not that the view mattered much since Harry and Hashi were the only visitors present to enjoy it. And right now, the flowing light and shadow from all the flames did nothing to help the already dubious atmosphere left behind by the dog-creature's departure. Even though the smell of their just-finished vegetable noodle soup lingered deliciously to challenge canine sulfur, the chamber's air still held little appeal.

What had seemed at first to be artistic views painted on both the hall's plastered walls and its translucent bone screens, views of various humans admiring assorted mountainous landscapes, were now shifting in the firelight, altering as terribly as the people portrayed. They first showed slow symptoms of some strange and unknown disease that left their bodies withered, their skins wrinkled, and their hair bleached pale. Then they abruptly collapsed, obviously dead, before being carried off by humanoid creatures that subtly resembled the recently departed hound, so that they could be restored and tortured. If any humanoids escaped, as most inevitably did, the entire sequence just began once more.

The overall aesthetic effect produced by mingling archaic craft-work with some obscure technique of modern projection was awful. Hachi turned away from regarding a half-clad lady being sawed in half to look inquiringly at D'Zolpa, who informed him, rather helplessly, "During the off-season, the Chamber of Long Viewing does this from time to time even though, for a Daimoni hall, it's a very bad design."

Hachi pursed his lips sympathetically before parting them to say, "So, then. Stop guarding our food, sit down, and have some drinks of your own. You'll feel better." Harry, who had been scooping up in turn each tiny cabbage or potato on the platter before the pair of them, and studying it suspiciously before returning it to its place, paused long enough to gesture agreement.

Surprised, D'Zolpa stared at the space on their shared bench that his hominid patrons had left empty when they sat to wait for their evening meal. He seemed to at last register the third place-setting left for him on the table in front of the vacant stretch of bench. He blinked. He suppressed a small smile. Then he leaned his spade against the table next to his allocated place, and sat.

"The fermented mare's milk is interesting. Let me pour you a cup. Although I'll just finish off this last, little bit first so you can experience the undiluted effect of a fresh batch." Hachi drank deep. "Yes, interesting. I'd better check the quality of this new flask, though." He drank deeply from the new flask before observing brightly, "Oh, and here comes our next course. Best to have something to eat before you drink anything much on an empty stomach."

The automated serving table rolled back in, its crystal bottles of spices and sauces chiming softly on shelves protected behind a decorative grill-work crafted into a lion's face. Above the condiments, the table also carried their huge platter of stir-fried meat in noodles, still steaming beneath a transparent dome slightly veiled by condensation. Leaning forward eagerly, Hachi reached out to seize the handle on the dome. The table tried to maim him.

Hachi's _kumade_ seemed to leap into his outstretched hand to block the table's lunge. Then he swept it around in a retaliatory blow that he obviously pulled at the last moment in order to miss the food. The table darted away on its rollers, the fretwork of its lion's muzzle clashing gold wire and jewel glass teeth at him.

"Give me that platter," Hachi told it, in a flat and deadly tone. The table wove a bit from side to side, obviously seeking an opening, and mutely snarled back in reply.

Harry let fall the last of the small potatoes into its spiced butter sauce, ignoring the plop that resulted. "Don't bother. The recipe might be based on their last visitor." He delicately plucked up one of the cabbages and munched on it. Swallowing, he said, "Although this isn't bad. You should try some."

"Put down the dish, roll away, and I might not grind you into the dust," Hachi told the table, ignoring Harry.

D'Zolpa, who had been eating a piece of barley bread, set it down on the plate before him. He rested his forehead on his interlaced hands and looked piteous, barely flinching when the first half of a man fell screaming down the chimney and into the hearth directly behind their table.

Turning to watch the torso and head use its single arm to crawl from the flames, scattering sparks as it did so, Harry said, "Now, that is one good reason we humans invented fire screens."

Since the other half of a man didn't include the head, it couldn't scream as it fell or landed. However, the initial halves of bodies falling down the other four chimneys could, and did.

Harry had brought his staff up beside him in a single-arm, sitting-guard stance, but he was chewing another cabbage and didn't otherwise comment during the rest of the falling, or crawling, or the reassembling followed by standing.

Once it was finally over, "I'm hungry," the first smoldering corpse said, its tone noticeably hollow. There was something about its form that unpleasantly recalled the wall painting and tapestries.

"We're all hungry," the other four corpses agreed, a distant, echoing quartet.

Harry swallowed his latest mouthful of vegetables and spiced butter. "Well, fine. But if you're joining us just for the main course, and seeing as how you didn't bring along a bottle or a bouquet, it'd be polite for you to provide some other entertainment."

"Also, I'll need a little more time to retrieve this platter," Hachi called from where he was still cautiously dueling the table that held their next course hostage. He lunged, but the table parried with a cruet.

The corpses conferred. Their leader pronounced, "We are empty, and you have meat. We will sing and play a song."

Reaching into their slightly smoking, red-brown rags, his cohort brought out trumpets and drums that, even at a distance, were obviously made from human thigh-bones and skulls. With them, they sent up a melodious wailing and thumping as their leader sang:

_Spring and Winter are both present in the moment._  
 _The young leaf and the dead leaf are really one._  
 _My feet touch deathlessness,_  
 _and my feet are yours._  
 _Walk with me now._

The silence following this offering was broken only by the sounds of fast steps on straw matting vying with metallic creaking as Hachi and the service table carried their debate to its conclusion. Harry stared at the corpses for a few moments, obviously wrestling with himself. At last, he sighed and admitted, "Impressive. Better than I could have done."

"You are gracious," the hollow singer replied.

Right as Harry said, "Thank you. Please join us," a loud crunch and the tinkle of shattered glass indicated that Hachi had made his opinion clear to the serving table. Ignoring this, Harry gestured toward the empty bench on the terrace side of the table.

As the five guests took the opposing bench, Hachi marched over to their table carrying the large platter, still gently steaming underneath its dome. "And here, right on time, is our next course."

Putting it down in the very center of the table, Hachi sat and smiled. Removing the dome, he leaned in to savor his victory at a closer range. Then his expression coagulated, and he leaned back and straightened. Turning toward the smoldering corpses, he told them, "You are our honored guests. Please, serve yourselves first."

"You are courteous," the hollow singer replied.

This seemed to cheer up Hachi. "Did you hear that, Harry?" Waving magnanimously, Hachi continued, "Do, please, take all you want. I'll merely have a bite or two of these wonderful vegetables. They complement this refined beverage so well." D'Zolpa, clutching his bread close, waggled his head in enthusiastic agreement.

For the next span of time, D'Zolpa ate buttered bread as if he was trying to choke himself. Harry picked delicately through the potatoes. Hachi consumed a small numerator of cabbage to a large denominator of fermented mare's milk. What happened to the meat course is best left unrecorded.

Done, the hollow singer said, "You are hospitable and generous. Before dessert --"

"-- dessert --" his companions echoed in four-part antiphon.

"-- we will show you something wonderfully precious."

He and his companions rose up and went out into the passageway from which the serving table had initially appeared.

"I don't think I'll like dessert, either," Hachi said, his tone thoughtful. He patted the shaft of his _kumade_.

"Is there anything left to drink?" D'Zolpa asked faintly. He didn't seemed surprised to be told that there wasn't.

Wherever the corpses had stored their wonder, it was much closer to the dining hall than the kitchen had been. The corpses soon returned, the four followers carrying between them an ancient and shabby wooden platform that had a form perched upon it.

The hollow singer preceding them spoke. "Always, there should be a moment before death comes when you are awake even though you sleep," he told them. "You may approach."

There didn't seem to be much to be made of this first comment, but the follow-up command was clear enough. D'Zolpa, after watching his temporary patrons rise from the table, took a deep breath, clutched at his spade, and did likewise. His ears down, he followed them over to the ancient wooden litter that the four smoldering corpses had lowered to the matting next to the remnants of the serving table.

At least the object atop it wasn't burning. Instead, it was so thoroughly and tightly wrapped in a deeply corroded, formerly golden and jeweled, metallic fabric that its similarity to the shape of a seated humanoid was the only hint that it could be some sort of ancient corpse. But if it was a corpse, its source might have been humanoid or homunculus or robotic: impossible to say.

Harry smiled twisted painfully at this sight. He massaged his forehead with his free hand. D'Zolpa glanced sideways at him and tensed. Harry's was the attitude of a stepped-upon cat about to swipe with claws extended. But, instead, Harry shot out one hand to seize D'Zolpa's upper arm and tow him closer to the litter.The corpses all turned to watch them approach.

For the moment unattended, Hachi whirled around his _kumade_ , reversing it so that its tines lightly, gently touched the forehead of the bundled figure. The smoldering corpses froze momentarily, seeming to fade slightly in the fluctuating light and darkness from the fireplaces as they did so.

"That's it, all right," Harry said softly to himself, and to D'Zolpa added, "Hachi's _kumade_ was crafted around the computational crystal once storing the pattern of our ship's emergency psychological guardian; it's part of what makes his _kumade_ so strong. And he just proved who was also the source of their wonder."

Hachi lurched back, breathing deeply, the sweat now beading his forehead visible even in the firelight. Harry took a deep breath himself, stepped forward in his turn, and touched the end of his hiking staff to the bundled figure's forehead. Once more the smoldering corpses froze, but this time the bundled figure seemed to stir.

"Harry's staff stores his Chronicles of our fleet's travels," Hachi now told D'Zolpa. "Oh, but its emergency mode, when authorized by a ship's officer, allows access to psychically over-read and over-write the partitioned-off sections of forgetty memory. He's transferring what we smuggled onto this planet."

As Hachi spoke, a faint gleam ran down the staff and into the swaddled figure. All the wrappings around it crumbled from the head downward; so did the corpses, in five simultaneous cascades of pattering and chiming particles. D'Zolpa swallowed a yip of surprise.

When the shimmering decay was over, Harry stepped away, rubbed his forehead one last time, and then sighed with what sounded like reluctant relief. Hachi was waving his free hand and _kumade_ around, coughing from the dust. The figure on the pallet uncrossed his legs and got up, now revealed to be a deeply archaic mode of computer-based robot shaped to resemble a sharp-featured, older man with an air of easy amusement about him.

The robot -- or the man, as D'Zolpa couldn't help seeing him -- was evidently unconcerned about being unclad aside from a few long, multicolored scraps of silk draped around his neck. He went over to the five piles of dust, reached down into the one slightly separated from the rest, and extracted the single, solid object it contained, a drum made from the domes of two skulls. Twirling it gently, he listened for a while to the sound of the antler-bone beater striking each head of the drum in turn.

Then, setting it down, he gazed at the dust and said, "Of the aesthetic masterpieces and indestructible possibilities you could have commissioned from the Daimoni, you chose a hell hall. And only because such tourist traps are an ongoing source of devotees' funds for a cloister. Nonetheless, thank you for preserving my reserve mobile unit, even if it was to display it as a relic capitalizing on a unwelcome and fatuous reputation for sanctity in one commissioned as a senior planetary administrator, not a sage."

Smiling wryly at the trio watching him, he raised two fingers and added, "Consider. This, although they practiced enough to have known we do not get to choose which small act will be everything remembered of us after all else we do is entirely forgotten. Something worthy of peaceful contemplation. Greetings again, Harry, Hachi. Thank you for freeing me once more."

Harry waved a hand with a negligent acknowledgment that didn't entirely hide his satisfaction. Hachi clapped hands and beamed smugly.

"And it's a pleasure to finally meet you, Young D'Zolpa." Walking over to D'Zolpa, the guardian removed one of the remaining scraps of fabric draped around his neck in order to drape it around D'Zolpa's instead. "I am Erden, third member and leader of this particular, tiny band of miscreants.

D'Zolpa touched the ancient white cyso-silk with his free hand. His expression was a mixture of surprise, pleasure, and dawning apprehension.

"Do you think we could still get some sort of dessert?" Hachi asked the room at large. 

VII

The next day's wanderings by the lake were pleasant, in part because the usual senior chef at the House of Peaceful and Enlightening Repose proved to have a wonderful way with packed food.

Much pleased, Hachi expressed his opinion of this state of affairs by repeatedly jumping into the shallows of the lake, shouting at the cold, splashing about, and then dashing out again. For his part, Harry stared dreamily at the various views of the lake and the cliffs and the mountains, his features both striking and preoccupied as a light wind tossed about his hair dramatically. Only his lips moving silently from time to time made it clear he was sieving the poetry from his surroundings, although he seemed less inclined to share his siftings than during the previous day.

D'Zolpa had dutifully offered his arm to the eldest of their party as they crossed the shingle. Erden had cocked a single eyebrow at him but taken it, and now strolled with D'Zolpa beside the lapping waters. D'Zolpa glanced over from beneath his eyelashes at the not-quite-a-mobile-computer from time to time, obviously trying to be polite instead of indulging in curiosity.

Hachi was splashing ashore again while shouting, "Cheese! I shall avail myself of cheese!"

"You just go and do that," Harry retorted. " Me, I'm going to try availing myself of all the enlightened repose this place is named for. That is, I will if it ever turns peaceful enough for me to get started."

"What will you avail yourself of, youngster?" Erden asked, as Hachi and Harry started bickering about the best way to be enlightened while reposing peacefully.

D'Zolpa pondered, ignoring the verbal chaos with very recently acquired skill. "A chance to stop deceiving others and learn something new?"

"Even if that would mean continuing to travel with somewhat estimable but no-longer temporary patrons? It can be harder to partition yourself off from senior colleagues than renters of yourself and your services.

"Umm," D'Zolpa started before he trailed off. Then his chin firmed, and he tried again. "I think I enjoy it. Them, I mean." Quickly retreating from these new and unsettling feelings into some semblance of reason, he continued, "And, at least they aren't demons."

"True enough." The lines of amusement seemed to deepen slightly around Erden's eyes. "Although, if I were you? I'd still bring along that spade."

VII

Young D'Zolpa would find the spade quite useful during their subsequent travels. He was often glad he'd bothered to listen to this first lesson from the one who would be his best teacher.

If there is any other lesson to be learned amidst all this sound and fury while journeying, one that could be tolerated in an Instrumentality which remembers the truth and forgets Nothing, it is probably best expressed in words from the Second Ancient Days:

_On my feet are traveling shoes,_  
 _my hand holds an old vine staff._  
 _Again I gaze beyond the dusty world--_  
 _what more could I want in that land of dreams?_


End file.
